FCC Ruling Could Set Connected Cars and Wi-Fi on Collision Course

Image: NHTSA

The U.S. government, automakers and safety institutions have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into getting cars talking to each other through an ad hoc Wi-Fi network. It’s a large piece of a puzzle that could nearly eliminate car crashes, but an initiative from the FCC could put it in jeopardy.

The FCC recently announced plans to open up previously restricted frequency spectra to general Wi-Fi use, although it was originally set aside for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, along with use by government entities such as the FAA. The Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America) is concerned that the federal agency is setting up a collision between competing interests.

The FCC is acting in part because of pressure from the Obama administration to open up more of the air waves for data-hungry devices. In 2010 President Obama signed a memorandum designed to increase the sharing of airwaves to alleviate a shortage of frequencies, due in part to the public’s increased appetite for Wi-Fi. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January his agency’s plan to clear 195 MHz of spectrum in the 5 GHz band for Wi-Fi use.

“As this spectrum comes on line, we expect it to relieve congested Wi-Fi networks at major hubs like convention centers and airports,” Genachowski said in e-mailed remarks in preparation for an FCC meeting on the proposal on February 20.

But the frequencies the FCC wants to open to new Wi-Fi applications overlap with the 5.9 GHz band set aside for future V2V communication.

ITS America recently sent a letter to the FCC signed by automakers and others, including the AAA and state DOT officials, warning the FCC that the new Wi-Fi networks could interfere with wireless communication between connected cars. The brewing spectrum battle brings to mind the tragic tale of LightSquared. The star-crossed company had ambitious plans to build a large-scale wireless broadband network that was initially approved by the FCC. But later the agency ruled that LightSquared’s plans would interfere with GPS transmissions, and that the airwaves weren’t big enough for both technologies.

“We don’t oppose spectrum sharing,” ITS America president and CEO Scott Belcher told Wired. “There is a shortage in this country. Our position is, between the private and public sectors, hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in connected vehicles.” A decade ago ITS America successfully petitioned the FCC to set aside this spectrum, Belcher added. “Opening the spectrum to unlicensed usage is a change,” he says. “We’re at a point where [connected cars are] finally about to become real.”

ITS America has another federal agency on its side: the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. NHTSA along with ITS America, automakers and others are currently conducting a connected car field trial in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan that involves 3,000 vehicles. The goal of the test is to see how vehicles communicate with each other and traffic infrastructure to share information such as speed and location to reduce collisions by warning drivers of road hazards and dangerous highway conditions. Based on the results of the field trial, NHTSA will decide by the end of this year whether to mandate the V2V technology in new cars and implement it in the years to come.

“We’re talking about technology that can help reduce non-impaired vehicles crashes by over 80 percent Belcher contends. “That’s bigger than safety belts, bigger than electronic stability control and bigger than airbags. Do you really want to put that kind of safety at risk for unlicensed Wi-Fi applications? The answer has to be no.”

But there are ways to share spectrum, and enough time to figure out how to do it, according Egil Juliussen, an analyst with IHS Automotive. He acknowledges that tests need to be conducted to determine that the frequencies are not close enough to cause interference. “There needs to be a guard band between them, an adjacent frequency that’s not used,” he adds. Julissen also says that he doesn’t expect connected cars to hit the road until until around 2019. “So there’s time to test it,” he says. “There’ll be a way to make this work; they’ll find a solution.” But he adds that an unfavorable FCC ruling has the potential to squash hundreds of millions of dollars of investment into a promising technology. Just ask LightSquared.

“U.S. DOT is aware of the FCC’s proposed action to open up the 5 GHz wireless spectrum band,” NHTSA told Wired in a statement. “Our connected vehicle research is ongoing and we look forward to working with our federal partners, including the National Telecommunications and Information Administration [NTIA] and the FCC, to evaluate the impact of spectrum sharing on vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication.”

The FCC did not respond to our request for comment.

At its meeting on February 20 the agency decided to move ahead with its spectrum sharing plan for the 5 GHz band. But it too will take awhile since the FCC will be collecting comments before proceeding with rule making, and it could take at least a year or more for NTIA to sort out potential interference issues. And while opening up the spectrum could eventually mean faster Wi-Fi, it may also mean you’ll need a new router in addition to being a speed bump on the road to the connected car.

“The last thing the V2V initiative needs is a cloud being cast from potential interference from unlicensed use of the same spectrum,” Roger Lanctot, an automotive electronics analyst with Strategy Analytics, says. “The NHTSA-driven effort is already up against [automakers’] resistance to adding cost and weight and the even bigger barrier of chicken-and egg-deployment – along with the lack of a business model.”